‘Don’t make a damn speech!’ Pedro snarled in Spanish.
He gave a grunt and a man groaned. A woman screamed. The light from the doorway was fleetingly interrupted. A man, dressed in an ankle-length nightshirt, was shoved out into the night. He could do nothing to break his slam into the hard-packed dirt of the yard. For his legs were tied together and his hands were bound behind his back. The impact of the fall knocked the breath from his body. But he sucked in more air and used it to power the words of a prayer.
‘One, Americano!’ Espada called.
‘Two, gringo!’
He remained in the motionless crouch, Winchester tightly gripped and eye against the knot hole.
‘Three, bastardo!’
It was his life against that of a peon who he didn’t even know. And the old man in the nightshirt was on borrowed time already. He did not even blink the narrowed eye at the knot hole when a volley of fast shots exploded through the doorway. Simply widened it a fraction, in surprise. For the half-dozen bullets did not even graze the cringing old man as he rolled himself up into a ball - divots of dirt and puffs of dust springing up around him.
‘Manuel!’ the woman inside the house shrieked.
‘Is OK, hag,’ Espada announced. ‘If we kill your husband, who cook for us, eh? You sure can’t.’
He laughed.
The old man in the nightshirt sobbed.
Halfway up the slope in front of the house, Emma Diamond caught her breath and was certain the man called Edge was dead. It was not that she thought him incapable of sacrificing the peon’s life for a chance to save his own. She understood too well his philosophy of self-preservation at all costs to think this.
But, she was gripped by the terrifying thought, no man could remain so totally still for so long unless he were dead - or at best, unconscious. And she had been watching the cart and the horses and their moon shadows ever since she recovered from the momentary stunning of her fall. By the intensity of her stare, she was able to discern the form of the tall half-breed -dark upon dark. There had not been even a fractional movement since he collapsed against the cart amid a fusillade of blasting shots. And if Edge was dead … Vivid memories crowded into her pain-wracked mind. Of her naked body suffering the worst punishment she could conceive beneath the lusting, thrusting want of a man.
The remembered agony found vocal outlet in a shrill scream. And, as she powered upright and whirled to race up the slope, it was still the memory of the past and not the pain of the present that continued to wrench screams from her.
‘She is alive!’ the unnamed Mexican yelled. ‘I go for her.’
‘Do so!’ Pedro agreed.
Edge let out his pent-up breath in a silent sigh. And the obscenity he formed to direct at the woman remained in his throat. Just the one man burst out of the house and leapt over the curled form of Manuel: his mind too full with thoughts of Emma to consider that death might still lurk behind the wrecked cart.
Death, in the form of the bullet in the breech of the tight-held Winchester, extended the Mexican’s lease on life. Edge ignored the running man and kept all his attention concentrated through the knot hole, his slitted eye not wavering from the lighted doorway and its flanking windows. Pedro was taking the opportunity to run a second test, with his woman-hungry partner as the unwitting reagent.
The running footfalls were heavy and close by. Then they faded, and the man laughed to counterpoint Emma’s screams. There were less hurried sounds of movement inside the house.
Then Pedro and Espada stepped outside, guns still drawn and pointed at the tilted cart with the now-quiet horses hitched to the shaft. But Espada could not resist the temptation to divert his smiling attention up the slope - to where his partner was smoothly closing the gap on the stumbling woman.
Which elected Pedro to be the first to die.
Edge powered erect, his glinting-eyed and tight-lipped face and lean torso springing into sight above the cart. Pedro froze, cursed and fired. But his Colt was still aimed at the cart instead of the man behind it. His bullet ricocheted off a wheel hub and burrowed into the ground: but he didn’t see this. For the half-breed had matched the Mexican’s speed in squeezing the trigger. And the Winchester’s bullet took Pedro in the heart.
Pedro dropped his gun and staggered backwards. Edge swung the rifle a fraction of an inch and the level of the muzzle neither rose nor fell as he pumped the action. Pedro’s heels slammed into the helplessly bound Manuel and the big gunman fell hard and fast. Espada, his stubbled and filthy face contorted into a mask of horror, dropped into a crouch as he tried to take aim. But the Winchester had exploded and the bullet smashed into the centre of his face before the Mexican could put pressure on his trigger.
Espada turned as he collapsed, his gun flying from a loosened grip. An arc of spraying blood from the hole in his top lip hit the ground to measure the extent of the turn. Manuel moaned his terror and tried to struggle out from beneath the second falling man. He didn’t make it.
Edge whirled and pumped the Winchester again. His eyes, like slivers of blue ice, raked up the slope. Emma Diamond was still running. But her pursuer had given up the chase. The Mexican had swung into a tight turn and was sprinting across the slope - aiming for the isolated cover of the horse with the broken back. Edge fired and saw blood stream from the man’s shoulder. He kept on running. The next bullet drilled into the Mexican’s thigh. He tumbled with a scream of alarm rather than pain. Then he hit the ground and bounced into a roll. Edge pumped three more bullets into the man. The final shot ended the scream. The figure smacked into the base of a cactus, folded double, and became inert.
But the half-breed continued to keep the unmoving form covered: his own body as rigid as the Winchester jutting from his shoulder.
‘That’s enough!’ Emma cried, her voice on the brink of hysteria. ‘No more, please!’
Edge looked higher up the slope, and saw the woman had reached the crest before she ended the run. Now she was staring downwards, her hands raised with the palms pressed against her ears.
‘Manuel!’ the woman inside the house cried desperately. ‘Manuel!’
‘It is all right, my dear,’ her husband told her in his native language, ceasing to struggle beneath the weight of the two blood-spilling bodies. ‘Our troubles are over.’
Edge canted the rifle to his shoulder and allowed the tenseness to drain out of his stance as Emma lowered her hands and started down the hill. ‘Hope you’re wrong, feller,’ he muttered in English, and moved around the bullet-splintered cart to go towards the house.
The time and work worn face of the aged Mexican expressed heart-felt gratitude as Edge set aside the rifle and stooped to drag off the bodies of Pedro and Espada.
‘Bandits, senor,’ he explained. ‘They come here and demand food and a place to sleep. Maria, my wife, she is crippled and has not left her bed for seven years, senor. I am old. These men, they think nothing of such things. They were evil and you need have no regret that you killed them, senor.’
‘Guess I’ll learn to live with it,’ Edge said sourly as he used the razor to cut away Manuel’s bonds.
Manuel had a puffed right eye and a bad bruise on his jaw, showing that his bad treatment from the bandits had started before Edge and Emma had approached his farm. When he tried to rise, he grimaced, groaned and fell again. He forced a brave grin on to his slack mouth. His gums were naked.
‘It is difficult when an old man is thrown about and sat on, senor.’
Edge became tacitly solicitous and his movements were carefully gentle as he helped the old man to rise to his feet.
‘It’s because you want something from him,’ Emma said coldly as she neared the house, and pointedly avoided looking at the slumped bodies of Pedro and Espada.
Edge ignored her as he draped Manuel’s left arm around his own shoulder and half-carried the old man into the house.
‘The same as with Tom,’ the woman continued as she followed. ‘I thought you were bei
ng kind to him because he was so badly hurt. But you never do anything without an ulterior motive, do you? You wouldn’t give that man the time of day without expecting payment of some kind. Tom gave you information. What do you want here, Mr. Edge?’
The house had just the one room. To the left was the sleeping area dominated by a double bed. A thin, gray-haired, wrinkled woman of about sixty lay flat on her back beneath a filthy blanket. On the other side of the room was a cold stove, a table and two chairs. Apart from three wooden crates used to store cooking and eating utensils and a few meager food supplies, this was the full extent of the furnishings. The light came from an ancient lamp standing on the table, amid the scattered remains of an untidily eaten meal.
‘I do not blame your man for this, senorita,’ Manuel said, trying to placate the coldly angry Emma. ‘I do not blame him for what happened when the bandits tried to barter with my life. A man must do—’
‘Forget it, feller,’ Edge growled as he lowered Manuel on to one of the chairs at the table. ‘The lady talks a lot is all.’
On the bed, Maria was staring up at the ceiling. She seemed incapable of moving any muscles except those of her neck. As Edge helped her husband over the threshold, she had craned her head around. Her wrinkled features had expressed pained gratitude that Manuel was alive.
Edge went back to the doorway and Emma stepped aside. The tears of terror, which had coursed through the grime of travel, formed an outline around the base of the bruise which the half-breed’s blow had raised on her right cheek. The ebbing fear flooded back across her face as she saw the depth of the cold anger in the hooded eyes. But his hands remained loose and low at his sides.
‘I told you to stay up on the hill, ma’am.’
He went out through the doorway she had cleared, retrieved his Winchester and re-entered the house. He started to reload the rifle.
‘They were going to kill you!’ she defended.
Edge nodded. ‘Figured that out for myself. And when my life’s on the line, I like to pick my own time for taking the fellers I’m up against’
‘Please do not quarrel,’ Manuel put in to finish the period of silence that followed the half-breed’s soft-spoken protest. ‘It does not matter what has happened. Only that it has happened for the best.’
‘We do not have much, senor?’ the bed-ridden old woman said dully, continuing to gaze at the ceiling. ‘But what we have is yours.’
‘She says we can have anything they’ve got,’ Edge translated for Emma.
‘All I want is for this nightmare to end,’ Emma replied flatly, sagging against the doorframe.
Manuel was able to get to his feet unaided now, and the pain this caused took second place on his features to concern for the American woman.
‘You must rest, senorita’ he insisted as he hobbled towards her. ‘You will take my place in the bed. Your man and I will rest on the—’
‘He is not my man,’ Emma said emphatically. But her voice was the only sign of strength. She was on the point of collapse as she allowed the Mexican to take her hand and lead her to the bed.
‘I am sorry, senorita?’ Manuel soothed, gently turning her around and easing her out full-length alongside his helpless wife. ‘I do not wish to offend you.’
Weariness and shock made Emma immune to the squalor of her surroundings. She became as unmoving as the paralyzed old woman, and fixed her gaze on the same restricted area of ceiling.
‘It is not you who do that, senor,’ she replied to the Mexican. Then she sighed and closed her eyes.
‘Do you wish food before you rest?’ Manuel asked Edge. ‘It will be no trouble to relight the stove.’
The half-breed had rolled a cigarette and now he struck a match. ‘Obliged for the offer, feller,’ he replied on a cloud of smoke. ‘But I’ll eat as I go.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Emma exclaimed, raising her head off the evil-smelling pillow. Her suddenly wide eyes were fearful.
‘You hired me to do a job, ma’am. And for what you’re paying, I don’t figure to go to sleep on it.’ He peered out through the doorway. ‘Not when I’m this close to finishing it, leastways.’
He stepped across the threshold and heard Emma’s feet smack against the dirt floor inside the house. He ambled over to the cart, unhitched the two tethered horses and yelled as he slapped them on the rumps. With the smell of burnt powder and drying blood in their nostrils, the animals lunged into an eager gallop up the slope. Edge was halfway to where his gelding stood in the lemon grove when Emma became silhouetted in the lighted doorway of the squalid little house.
‘So I can’t follow you!’ she accused, leaning heavily against the doorframe.
‘Right, ma’am,’ he confirmed.
‘How do I know you’ll come back here if you get the money?’ Her voice grew shrill, with frustration or perhaps the nearness of hysteria again.
Edge shook his head. ‘When.’
‘What?’
He grabbed the reins of the gelding and led the animal out from under the trees.
‘When I get the money, ma’am,’ he corrected as he swung up into the saddle. ‘It’s a matter of a word. You have to accept mine.’
A look of desperation entered her eyes: as they darted from the mounted Edge, to the retreating horses, to the crumpled corpses of Pedro and Espada and then over her shoulder at the Mexican couple. Finally, she returned her gaze to the half-breed. Manuel came up behind her and cupped her elbow in his palm as the rigidity of fear and anger left her.
‘All right, Mr. Edge,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. I might endanger you again. Barney Castle, Tom, these three men ... so many have died.’
‘You forgot the priest, ma’am,’ the half-breed muttered.
She nodded. ‘Yes, Father Donovan.’
‘Makes six, not five,’ Edge said as he heeled his horse into an easy walk, angling him towards the base of the slope.
‘I haven’t kept a tally,’ Emma called after him. ‘Do I have to apologize for that?’
‘No,’ he told her over his shoulder. ‘Just proves you have to trust me, I guess.’
‘I realize I have no alternative,’ Emma said stiffly as Manuel urged her back into the house.
Edge’s thin lips curled back to show a frigid grin. ‘You sure can’t count on dead men,’ he growled softly.
Chapter Nine
EDGE ate jerked beef and cold beans from the can on the ride back to El Paso. Crossing the Rio Grande, the trail-weary gelding stumbled and pitched him into the night cold waters of the river. The ducking did something to dispel his own tiredness. The thought of the money he was close to earning did a great deal more to hold the threat of exhaustion at bay. Then, as the west Texas town of El Paso came into sight, the white of its adobe buildings showing clearly in the moonlight, the half-breed’s strong sense of self-preservation made him as alert as if he had just been roused from a solid night’s sleep. Conrad Andrews and the men with whom he rode had come by the money easily. They would not surrender it so.
A few lamps burned in the town, spilling the occasional shaft of yellow out into the pre-dawn darkness. But all of them were turned down to a low wick and the men who were watching Edge were not visible. A baby cried and a dog barked. Several people snored. A woman, or perhaps a child, moaned in a troubled sleep. The hooves of the gelding beat slow time on the hard-packed dirt of the streets, then halted on Division, outside the Holden House. The watchers made no move against Edge. As the best El Paso had to offer, it wasn’t much of a place. A combination of frame and adobe, it had a raised stoop, with a railed balcony above, which was shared by all the second floor front rooms. The only light showed through the frosted-glass panels of the closed doors giving on to the lobby. It wasn’t much brighter when Edge opened one of the doors and stepped across the threshold. The source was a lamp standing on the desk at one side of the lobby, opposite the stairway.
The night clerk had been using the lamp to read a dime novel. But the exciteme
nt of the reading had been too much or not enough. He was perched on a stool and slumped forward across the desk. His breathing was a true clue to the deepness of his sleep. He did not stir as the tall half-breed crossed the lobby.
Edge wrinkled his nose to the smell of cheap whiskey before he saw the bottle - three-quarters empty and still uncapped - standing behind the lamp. He halted in front of the desk and eased the Winchester away from his shoulder. He allowed the barrel free fall until it was six inches above the head of the sleeping clerk. Then he flicked his wrist to add power to the blow. A thick padding of black hair muted the sound of barrel against head. The clerk slipped from natural sleep into unconsciousness with nothing more than an irritated grunt.
‘You’d have had a headache anyway, feller,’ Edge muttered as he leaned over the desk and drew the register from a shelf beneath.
He flipped the book open to a marked page and ran a grimed finger down the list of recent entries. The Jap had signed in with the characters of his native language. He had the neatest hand. Conrad Andrews’ signature and those of George and Harry Hare were just decipherable. There were two crosses which presumably were the marks of Kenyon Lamb and Ira Walker.
Each man had been allotted a separate room on the second floor of the hotel. Four other rooms in the Holden House were occupied and five were vacant.
Edge closed the book and returned it to the shelf. It took him a full minute to locate the pass key, which was in the hip pocket of the unconscious clerk. Then he crossed the lobby and moved quietly up the stairway. At the top, he paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkened landing. The door to room seven was nearest the top of the stairs. One of the men who was unable to write had drawn this room. Edge keyed open the door, cracked it, slid inside, and closed it. A man was breathing as deeply and regularly as the clerk down in the lobby.
The half-breed padded silently over the uncarpeted floorboards. The rhythm of the sleeping man’s breathing did not alter. Just his head was visible, above the dark blanket and against the white linen of the pillow. His teeth were showing in a quiet grin as he dreamed of something pleasant.
EDGE: Ashes And Dust (Edge series Book 19) Page 10
